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Chat with other car drivers while driving

Just an idea I got as I drove past a short traffic jam with my bicycle.

I noticed that everyone sits in his “box” (also known as car) and that there is no communication among the drivers (with the exception of honking). Wouldn’t it be funny to chat with the drivers in front and behind of you?

From a technical point of view the realization would be rather “simple”: two displays (one display for showing messages to the driver in front of you, and the other for messages to the driver behind of you), and some sort of a keyboard integrated in the steering wheel (or a speech-to-text system).

4 comments

I predict that it would be abused very quickly. Cars seem to offer a sense of protection and anonymity that I think can be linked to the perceived anonymity on the internet, and see where *that* got web forums or usenet. First you’d get people just shouting or flooding to annoy others, then the spamming would start. As soon as you make it easy for large groups of people to communicate seemingly anonymously, you’ll get what Penny Arcade once so pointedly described as the ‘Internet Fuckwad Syndrome’.

Compare the hypothetical everyone-can-use-it chat system to e.g. short distance radios, like most truckers or taxi drivers use. They have a sense of community, it’s not all too easy to use, and it works. If you allowed just anyone it, quality would likely go down.

It really great thought! to avoid misuse, we should have some kind of pass-key concepts, by which the drivers can interact either through voice or text. [using Blue-tooth technology] [make it visble only to trust friends]

i had a personel experience, where by when we friends where travelling in 2 cars, and one of the car was lost on the way and we had to restore to tracing them phsically [no cell sites where active]. if the secure car-to-car communication is established we could have avoided that.

What I described in the article wouldn’t have helped you in the situation you described, as you only could communicate with the car in front or behind of you. On the other hand it is an interesting idea to have a way to communicate with friends in another car who are in the same region as you are.